Kwani? Open Mic

Tuesday we went to the Kwani? Open Mic at Club Soundd. Kwani? is sheng for 'So what?' It's the literary magazine at which Courtney interns as a marketer, and which shares the lot where we have our office. We met our friends from the Nation. We were worried about Maria, because she got there late and her phone ran out of batteries, and it's dangerous to walk places alone at night. The most dangerous time of night is supposed to be around 7, when it's just gotten dark and lights may not have all been turned on yet, and people may be out pretending to be commutors, looking to prey on commutors. This is a worrisome fact, considering how that's the time Megan, David, and I are usually commuting home from school on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but we're careful and try to time things properly, and take a cab if it's getting to be that time. We are always racing the sun. Once, early on, we decided to walk home from Jevanje, which was a mistake. We speedwalked/ practically jogged about 4 miles. We've learned our lesson now, though.
Anyway, Maria eventually showed up and relieved our worry. Apparently, she got a security guard to walk her 6 blocks to the place.

We met up with our friends from The Daily Nation, and for the third time ran into Andrew (our original Daily Nation connection, seen on far left) completely unplanned and randomly. Sadly, I think he flew home to Seattle Wednesday.

Samora, to my left, usually speaks at open mic, but he didn't Tuesday. He says he will next time.

There were jazz singers in between poets, and some of the poets were accompanied by beatboxers, a drummer, or a saxophone. One woman I really liked sang and rapped about breaking all the rules of being a woman and doing everything men do on the streets, basically breaking all the Nairobi gender norms. A lot of the poetry and music was in Swahili, but Samora did artful translations for me. The feature poet presented three poems, one of which was a sort of rap about God.

Afterwards, we went to Nakumatt, walked James and Samora to their matatus home where they negotiated for our taxis. Taxi negotiation here is quite a process. If you're mzungu and don't know Kiwahili, they'll always try and charge you 400 for a 200 ride, and you'll have to negotiate HARD to get it down to 250. A Swahili speaker will exchange quite a few sentences, complete with justifications and reasoning and hand gestures, and get it down to 200. Or, the less senior cab driver standing next to the one they've been negotiating with will take you for 200, once the senior cab driver walks away and concedes the business to him.

City center at night is quiet and peaceful and beautiful. It's so nice to be there without the crowds of people pressing in on you and harrassing you. Christmas lights blink, strung along windows and signs. There are lots of advertisements and lights that would have been modern and futuristic in the early 90s. At 9 pm, the main streets are as bright as they are during the day, and there are lots of professional business-type people walking around. You don't walk on any side streets. Later than that, we couldn't walk anywhere alone, but you're fine if you're with a male Nairobian or two.

I got in a friendly sort of argument about beggars with one of the guys. We passed a couple rather aggressive beggar women, who one of the guys told "you're not getting a single cent." They say they're thieves, and that if it had been the two of us girls by ourselves, there's no way they would have let us pass with our stuff still in our possession. I'm sure that's true. My basic argument, which I think he ended up condeding, was that they didn't choose their situation, and aren't necessarily bad people because of it. Of course, you shouldn't give to beggars because it's supposed to make more of a difference to give to non-profits that help them.

The dynamics of poverty in relation to crime and violence and race are so complex here, and present moral dilemmas for us every day. The police shoot to kill when a man steals a single pineapple from a factory farm with hundreds of thousands, and that's regular procedure. If someone steals your laptop, you resist the natural urge to yell, because it's better not to have a laptop than to see a man killed, even indirectly, because of you. At 2 AM, a tiny child with huge eyes comes up to the cab, hands outheld, the cab driver rolls up his window saying, "They're students. No money," and he continues to stand there, an inch from the window, until we roll away. Regularly we pass an albino woman with an umbrella and a black child. We regularly pass a blind man holding the elbow of a child as if he's being guided, who I suspect may not actually be blind at all and may actually be exploiting the child, as is so common here. We regularly pass a ten year old who once followed me blocks begging for money, stroking my arm, calling me a beautiful angel, and asking to spend the night with me. It's terrible to see a child sitting alone on a sidewalk bundled against a wall, eyes wide open, in the middle of a chilly night where it's not even safe to walk alone, and not be able to do anything about it.